This book was mental! In a good way. It was quite fun. I thought it was a bit slow as we don't particularly see the supernatural concept until around 50% in. But we know something is off, something is not right. The three girls were enigmatic and made the story interesting. I enjoyed the ending too where in a way they got their happily ever after, even though the whole town was demised. A fun read!

My thanks to the lovely people at Titan Books for my gifted review copy of 'Girls Of Little Hope' by Dale Halvorsen and Sam Beckbessinger which is out today from all good book shops!

It came with two lovely little badges and a Magpie 'zine ( which makes sense if you have read the book)

I bloody loved this book.

It's one of those things where you read the synopsis, and just feel deep in your bones you know you will love it because a) the 90's were when I was really coming into who I was as a person b) I LOVE Stranger Things and The Thing  c)it's a Titan Book and I absolutely rave about them a lot, if you hadn't already noticed d) the girls on the milk carton on the cover. All I needed to know.

And it did not let my expectations down in any way shape or form. It begins at what one might think is the end, when 2 of the 3 missing girls reappear and are subject to a physical and psychological grilling.

The town of Little Hope is so boring, so mundane that one of the girls even opines about why a police station is necessary. Nothing has happened since that time Ronnie Gaskins killed his parents and before that is anyone else's guess.

But there is an alleged gold mine in the woods which surround the town and this could be the ticket out of there for 3 young women desperate to take control of the narrative of their lives, fed up of it being determined by a patriarchal society that sees them and rejects them for all the flaws which make them so endearing to each other.

You have Donna,endlessly derided as the daughter of a single father, who wears her sudden onset of physical maturity as a massive 2 fingers up to conservative society-she has a woman's body and is damned if she will feel shamed.

Then there is Tammy-Rae, the daughter of a conservative horse breeder, ridiculously well off but emotionally poor. Constantly made to feel like a failure, her growing feelings towards her own sex squashed because it is wrong and ungodly. Except she is living with a horrendous father and a mother who self medicates with alcohol. And Tammy-Rae punishes herself for not being the perfect daughter by taking it out on her body.

Lastly, there is Kate, an ex-beauty queen whose body is used as a weapon against her mother, she has put on weight to push herself out of a circuit which prides itself on valuing external appearances far more than what is on the inside. A deeply loving and self aware young woman, she seeks to exist beyond the confines of her mother's expectations and hopes that she will do better than her.

All 3 have parents trying to live through them, and as they battle to find out who and where they are in a 90's conservative American town, listening to Riot Girl bands -the song titles from some AMAZING groups form the headings of each chapter and make an all round top tier Spotify playlist !-and can only truly be themselves around each other. The girls have no expectations and do not try to live through their friends, they just are.

And it's so difficult to express just how important this is to have even one person in your life who you can let those barriers down around without the anticipation of being hurt.

The narrative is told from Donna and Rae's perspective as well as Kate's mother, Marybeth, who is desperate to find out where her daughter is. Kate's diary provides her take on things and in her physical absence from the book, this creates a sense of mourning and loss in this reader which is neatly juxtaposed with her mother's quest to bring her daughter home.

And in the absence of a reasonable explanation, stories and theories arise left right and center, whilst the truth of what has happened, and is continuing to happen, is far more bizarre and unreal than anyone could ever imagine.

This book completely compelled me, swept me away from the very title-these girls had little hope of ever escaping from this town, and it appears the rest of the town had given up on it too-to the cover design to the million and one small details sprinkled throughout the text which bring it to life.

It is the perfect summer read, pulls no punches when it comes to full on body horror and I am just so very keen to see what these authors do next.

All of the stars for Girls of Little Hope!

-Spoiler free review-

This book was an absolute masterpiece. The writing was so cinematic, it was like a movie was playing in my mind as I read this. I grew attached to the girls and their bond very quickly and I was enjoying the writing style so much that I really wasn't even thinking about the horror aspect until it started to makes it's way into the story-line but oh my god it was executed so well! I felt so many different emotions through this book for all of the characters and their back stories, I laughed and I cried and the horror aspect had me feeling genuinely uncomfortable which really doesn't happen often for me!

I will definitely be buying myself a physical copy of this book and keeping an eye out for more work by these amazing authors!

I finished this book only yesterday and it has consumed my thoughts! I loved it, it’s the right level of creepy, with an atmosphere that I’ve only read before in books by Grady Hendrix. I loved it! The characters were the right level of complex and yet believable. I didn’t enjoy the chapters from Katy’s mum that much, they were necessary to the plot but I didn’t really vibe with her character. I found the ending happened very quickly, there was a lot of build up and then the climax was a little disappointing in the end, I felt like it could have finished bigger. However, that does not take away how incredible this book is and I cannot wait to read more from the author in the future!!

Girls of Little Hope is a perfect mix of Stranger Things and The Faculty (I know, I know, the description of it says The Thing but I feel like this really encompasses The Faculty’s body-snatching teen angst vibes) and it is absolutely a must-read for anyone who loves the 90s and the power of weird female friendships.

The book starts out strong with us being thrust into the story with Donna and Rae being examined by a medical doctor, seemingly out of it and confused as to where they are, with it slowly becoming clear that they have been lost in the woods for days — with their other friend, Kat, who is still missing. It then follows the POVs of Donna, Rae, and Kat’s mum, with entries from Kat’s diary and newspapers scattered throughout, while they try to uncover the mystery of their disappearance and reappearance without Kat.

I went into this book with almost no knowledge of it except it was about some missing girls and I assumed the plot would revolve around that, which it partly did, but there was so much more to the story than just that. This isn’t just your regular old ‘missing girls’ kind of story: there’s a mysterious cave, weird mould, and a strange monster in the woods — and then, of course, there’s the struggles of being a teenage girl growing up in a small town. Girls of Little Hope, while a mystery horror’ish book, is ultimately about friendship between teenage girls who wants to be more, do more, than what is possible in a small town. Who struggle with their identities, generational trauma, poverty, grief and so much more. This book does an exceptional job of not only being horror, and showing horror in the purest sense, it also is able to show the horrors of everyday life — controlling family members, insecurities and worries that come out in self-harm, and uncontrollable grief that seems impossible to overcome for someone who is just a teenage girl.

It was an absolute ride reading this. I was barely able to put it down and if I wasn’t a slave to capitalism and had to work (urgh) I would’ve definitely finished this within a day. The authors did such a good job making you really worry and care for these teenage girls, and yeah, even some of the adults too, and there were some absolutely emotional moments. I definitely shed a few tears because of Marybeth — which, I do wanna mention quickly, I also liked the subtle and not so subtle commentaries on motherhood, and the relationship between mother and daughter. How there’s this pressure as a mother to keep everything bad away from your daughter, to take all the hits and hide it all away so she’ll never know, except it just ends up causing a bigger rift between the two. It’s just so, urgh, real. There's a lot in this book that is so serious, so real, and so sad and I loved every moment of it, and I loved the characters and how their trauma and suffering shapes their choices throughout it all. I really don’t think there’s any weak moments in this and the ending, while imo sad, felt fitting because of it all.

ANYWAY, this book really is perfect for anyone that wants a strange mystery to solve that has hints of Twin Peaks, The Thing, Stranger Things, and The Faculty. If you like body-snatchers and trauma it’s a perfect read — and if you’re a fan of Parasite by Darcy Coates this may also be just your thing.

Thank you to the publisher Titan Books, NetGalley, and the authors for this digital ARC. I’ll just be over here crying over Donna, Kat, and Rae (especially Rae)!

a horror novel set in the 90s following three girls who go into a cave, but only two come out, naked & covered in blood. I SO enjoyed reading this and watching the story unravel. I also loved seeing the three girls interact and deal with problems, like rae, a sapphic girl dealing with her homophobic religious family & kat who deals with her mum's fatphobia. it tackled these topics really well while also telling an interesting, enjoyable & sometimes terrifying story. it's described as being for fans of stranger things, the thing & the 90's and I totally get it.

It feels odd to describe a book as both unsettling and heart-warming, but it's an accurate description for Girls of Little Hope, a full-throttled horror with a heart of gold.

In September 1996, three teenage girls vanish without a trace in the small town of Little Hope, California. Three days later, two of them reappear, naked and covered in blood, with no memory of where they have been or what has happened to their friend.

From the opening chapter, the mystery captured my attention, and the multiple POVs allowed it to unfold at a thrilling pace, with each chapter setting up questions from one character's perspective to be answered by another character later on. The authors also made effective use of newspaper and magazine clippings to fill in important backstory without leaving the narrative feeling over-burdened with exposition. The extracts from the girls' zine, which is what brought the friends together in the first place, also provided a useful insight into their friendship and individual characters.

The girls are clearly established and differentiated from the outset, and I was immediately invested in their friendship and each girl's story. Each girl bears different expectations but they all weigh heavily. Donna is outspoken and fearless, the kind of girl to perform a self-composed, expletive-ridden punk song at a school assembly, but secretly sensitive; Rae is incredibly repressed, forced to hide everything about her true self from her abusive father, alcoholic mother and oppressive church community; former pageant queen Kat is constantly on a quest for knowledge, and dreams of a life much bigger than that of her loving - but overbearing - single mother. These girls are not the mere cannon fodder teenagers common to this genre: they are tough and tenacious and good and lovable, and you can't help but root for them. Of the lesser characters, Marybeth, Kat's mother, is the one we spend most time with, and she has a well-written, empowering character arc.

The mystery is compelling, but the blurb promised horror, and it is delivered in spades, as the story shifts from thriller/coming of age drama to something far more menacing. The second half of the book is a gore-spattered romp of a read with graphic descriptions of violence and death.

Girls of Little Hope is far more than a pulpy horror though. It is an accurate portrayal of how it feels to be a teenager languishing in stifling small town torpor, convinced that life is passing you by elsewhere. It is a beautifully, believably drawn story of teenage female friendships. It is also an examination of how our parents' strengths, failings and generational trauma shape us as people, which is portrayed poignantly in the chapters from the perspective of Kat's mother, Marybeth.

Some of the 90s references felt a little heavy-handed, e.g. 'a clone like Dolly the Sheep', 'faster than their school banned pogs,' but overall the vibe of the period is rendered with care and authenticity. Girls of Little Hope is a real nostalgic treat for those of us who grew up on Christopher Pike and R.L. Stine. There are also allusions to another 90s classic, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with the horrors that haunt the town of Little Hope acting as a metaphor for the dark underbelly and sordid secrets of a small town, and for the metamorphosis from childhood to adulthood.

Thank you to NetGalley and Titan Books for giving me the opportunity to read and review an ARC of this book.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Titan Books for a digital ARC in exchange for a review.

While I'm a big fan of horror films, I don't tend to go for horror fiction - I don't know why. The mystery aspect of this book drew me in, however, and I raced through the second half in a single sitting. I can understand the comparisons to Stranger Things, but for me this book was more enjoyable.

I was very interested in each of the three girls' background, but I found myself wanting more about Rae; she seemed to be the least developed character of the three and was given less to do. The ending also felt a little rushed - maybe a chapter or two more would have given a bit more room for a more satisfying round-off.

Ultimately, I really enjoyed this book, and it kept me guessing up until the end.

3.5 stars, rounded up.

The premise seems familiar enough: three girls go into the woods, and only two return. But therewith ends the similarities between Girls of Little Hope (Sam Beckbessinger, Dale Halvorsen), and a dozen other horrors/thrillers.

Initially reading like a missing person/murder mystery-type thriller, a sense of foreboding slowly sets in, until the full horror – and I do mean horror – sets in: this is no human perpetrator.

With a distinctly 90s feel, Little Hope offers the reader a vivid trip down memory lane, particularly for those who were teenagers at the time. Insets of a home-made “zine” provide an especially well-textured reading experience.

As a Beckbessinger-fangirl, requesting Girls of Little Hope would be a no-brainer except for one thing: I don’t typically read horrors. I am a total scaredy-cat. Ultimately, the fangirl won out, and am I ever glad she did.

Forget the milieu, forget the horrific (and OH MY GOD sub-twist): Girls of Little Hope is filled with reflections on girlhood, friendship, parenthood, and coming of age in a small town at the turn of the millennium. (And no active love interests. Not a one. HOW REFRESHING!)
I don’t often post reviews directly to my blog anymore, yet here it is – that should be evidence enough of my strong (great!) recommendation of Girls of Little Hope.

“WELCOME TO LITTLE HOPE, CA! POPULATION 8,902.”

Best friends Donna, Rae and Kat skipped school on Wednesday afternoon to traipse through the woods. Two of them returned on Saturday. One is still missing.

Donna Ramirez is a wannabe rebel. Her mother, who left when Donna was 9, now has a new family. Donna has an older brother, Jay. She lives with her father, Hector, who is fluent in Dad jokes.

Donna doesn’t remember what happened in the woods.

Tammie-Rae (Rae) Hooper is a preppy church girl and star of the athletics team. She lives with her parents and her brother, Brandon. Her parents have a list of “Forbidden Demonic Things”. It’s a long list.

“They love you so long as you stay their good girl.”

Rae returned from the woods screaming.

Their sweat glands have been on overdrive since they returned and they’re mighty peckish.

“Remember what we promised each other?”

Wallflower nerd Katherine (Kat) Larkin recently began wearing oversized men’s flannel shirts. She’s smart and loves Nancy Drew books.

Kat is still missing.

The story is told by each of the girls as well as Marybeth Larkin, Kat’s mother. Through them, you meet some of Little Hope’s townsfolk, including town boogeyman, Ronnie Gaskins, who murdered his parents when he was a child.

I flew through this book. I wasn’t a fan of the amount of times I read about how much weight one character had gained and the size of another’s breasts but there was a lot to love. The 90’s pop culture nostalgia. The mystery of what happened to the girls during the missing time. The squishy body horror. The newspaper articles and zine pages. Snooping in Kat’s diary. The fact that I was hooked the entire time.

If they didn’t live in a small town, Donna, Rae and Kat may not have ever become friends. If it wasn’t for newspaper club, they probably would have remained acquaintances. They reminded me of the intensity of teenage friendships: the shared experiences and the bonds that feel unbreakable.

I’m a teensy bit obsessed with the prayer to Scully, “our lady of The X-Files”.

Favourite no context quote: “I will be the Batman of toilets.”

Content warnings include mention of alcoholism, attempted suicide, domestic abuse, self harm and sexualised violence.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Titan Books for the opportunity to read this book. I’m rounding up from 4.5 stars.

It is important to note that most of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, touches on these topics as well. Many people might find the book's subject matters & those detailed in my review overwhelming. I would suggest you steer clear of both if this is the case. Please note that from this point forward I will be writing about matters which contain reflections on the death of an animal, the death of a minor, violent crime, insinuations of sexual violence against children, body mutilation, body decomposition, grief, self-harm, domestic abuse, inter-generational trauma, & others.

The unsuspecting town of Little Hope is nestled quaintly in the California countryside. Not far enough away that its inhabitants are prevented from a jaunt to civilization yet, too far away for them to feel a part of the booming populace of the State. The slow-moving town boasts of one morbid point in its history, leaving the townsfolk confident that they made the right decision to remain aloof from the developing world. However, on one casual afternoon like every other, after the townsfolk had been told that three (3) teenage girls had wandered off for shopping malls & city thrills, did they realize that horror is not the concept found in the homes of the other—it is the terror found in one’s own backyard.

The publisher—Titan Books—has become something of a trusted source for me with regard to the publication of good Horror stories. Over the course of many years, I have fine-tuned my appreciation for the genre into a specific type of Horror. Though the tales of monsters & lore are terrifying in their own right, I find nothing to be more unsettling than reality. When I started reading this book, on a sunny Sunday morning, I found myself easily swayed into the story. I didn’t ask much of this fiction; I wanted to know the layout of the town, & understand why the inhabitants were so easily fooled into believing that three teenage girls would simply run away from home. These are not complicated demands & one may note that the latter is more so a request for intimacy with the world of the story rather than a need for a logical rationale.

In the non-fictional world, people go missing every single day. Judicial bodies are hard-pressed to turn to the worst-case scenario, even knowing that it is probably the most likely. What readers will find within this book mirrors the real world with a tinge of orange lighting. The characters in this story have known one another for their entire lives & in a bid to play pretend, they adopt more distinct roles within their community. One of the men becomes a police chief whereas another is a religious leader intent on protecting a child predator. Amongst the women, we have the drunken housewife who cannot stand her religious husband whilst simultaneously loving the wealth devotion allows her. Another is a young mother whose husband beat her senselessly. No adult in this book felt very real to me. Certainly, not every single character needs to have a fully formed backstory nor do we need to spend pages on end delving into their person. However, they were niche representatives of a category of people.

I certainly would have appreciated following the narrative of another parent rather than Kat’s. Between the two the reader notes a great deal of tension that never really meets its own potential. Kat is dead throughout this entire story, save for the sections the reader explores via her personal diary. Her mother, on the other hand, is about as ignorant as a person might get while raging against logic, every chance she gets. I found the sections of the journal somewhat tedious to read, though they certainly brought a much-needed level of normalcy to the story. Kat is a regular girl trying to make her way in a town filled with adults who have no way of clocking their own drama. Perhaps this is unfair. Kat’s mother fell pregnant with a man who was a domestic abuser. One might find it acceptable to give her some leeway. However, she turns around & treats Kat like a golden spoon for the entirety of her life, ignoring Kat’s own feelings towards the matter.

Each of the three girls shared a relationship with their parents that was tumultuous & veered on abusive. Rae is sent to a conversion camp which results in her self-harming. Donna is abandoned by her mother & lives in poverty. While Kat’s mother is a helicopter parent that drafts her into beauty pageants & bemoans her for her weight. There is rather little to highlight in terms of a positive aspect of any of the parents. Because of this, the girls are somewhat left to their own devices. On one such occasion, they decide that it would be a good idea to follow a man convicted of familicide into the woods on his property in the hopes of getting close enough to him for an interview.

Their journey into the woods leads them to a strange gorge—perhaps it is something else but I had a rather difficult time picturing the landscape of this particular bit of forestry & therefore imagined something of a darkened pit that led into a ravine where a monster lived. The monster in this story reminded me of The Kaonashi (No-Face) from “Spirited Away” (2001) while sprouting the dimensions of a magnified earthworm. The way that the beast consumed spirits truly made me flash through the bathhouse scenes in the 2001 film & I couldn’t move past the similarities. This is not to say that it is a bad thing rather, I couldn’t move past a giant No-Face slithering in the woods as he did throughout the film.

My eagerness to have the mystery resolved all but vanished when we learnt that a parasitic sentient mucus was flitting through the woods consuming everything in its path. Again, this is not so much a problem with the book as it is because I do not necessarily care for monsters & ghouls—rather less for ones that remind me of childhood movies that were spooky in their own right & therefore leave me with little room to be afraid of the familiar.

I have overall, very little to say about this book. It allowed me to pass the time & I enjoyed the first half. I cannot say that it was a bad book because that would be untrue; so many readers will find this to be an exemplary read. Therefore, suffice it to say that, this wasn’t a book for me. The terror that I was hoping for was rather surface-level scares whereas I wanted the beast to be all of the purely terrible things hidden in the town. Ultimately, this story will be for readers who enjoy the gore of a body being sucked up from its middle; the imagery of blood-soaked sheets, tarantula limbs reaching past thick darkness to touch the delicate young skin of the tormented young girls who stood at the entrance of its cave.

Thank you to NetGalley, Titan Books, Dale Halvorsen, & Sam Beckbessinger for the free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

Thank you to Titan books for this arc copy on Netgalley.

I absolutely loved this book! It was so gripping and made me want to read it constantly, the plot twists were exciting and shocking. I read through this book so quickly because I just couldn’t put it down!

I loved the formatting of the newspaper articles interwoven and other media items through, I think it made it that bit more interactive and interesting. I liked that we had several povs and heard from lots of different characters. I loved the creepy elements and the mystery leading up throughout.

I 100% recommend this book to anyone who loves horror, sci-if and thrillers. I would also recommend this to people who loved the book House of Hollow by Krystal Sutherland.

I gave this book 5 ⭐️ as there’s not a thing I would have changed about it.

I absolutely adored this book!

I don't know what it was in the end for me, so much was captivating. I loved the genre blend of science fiction and horror and traditional small-town mystery. That coupled with the changed POVs and mixed media in telling the story, I thought the authors did a fantastic job of laying out this thriller based on the premise that three girls wander into a cave and only two come out. There was so many things going on, but I didn't feel overwhelmed or the story was complicated and or that I was losing my way anywhere. Each plot twist was carried out very well, and each loose thread was neatly tied up. I loved the emotion conveyed, the broader, more existential concepts explored, and at the heart of everything, was this teenage girl who went missing and no one could properly explain what happened to her.

Based in the 90s with 3 teenage girls in small town America- that itself sounds like a horror. But when 3 enter a cave and only 2 come out so begins the mystery and the horror which will draw you in. I had no idea where this book was going but I enjoyed every twist and turn until the stunning conclusion.

I obviously missed something in the blurb about this book as it went in a (horror) direction I was not anticipating!
I enjoyed the girl's relationships, their different backgrounds and teenage angst, but, although I enjoy a horror book, this one left me cold and it felt a bit of a cop out rather than a surprising plot twist.
Thank you to netgalley and titan books for an advance copy of this book.

Girls of Little Hope completely blew me away. Everything was perfectly written from the horror and mystery elements which kept me on the edge of my seat throughout to the friendship of the three main girls and seeing their dynamics throughout the book. I didn't see anything coming, whenever I thought I had it figured out I was completely wrong and the sense of suspense and dread just grows as you keep on reading. I can't recommend this enough and I will be checking out more by this author for sure.

Donna, the rebel, Rae, the good girl and Kat, the budding writer are best friends, it is them against their very close minded boring little town of Little Hope, California.
They decide to hike into the woods in search of the fabled gold mine of Little Hope and days later Donna and Rae stumble into town, both covered in blood and naked, what happened to them and where is Kat.
Do the survivors know more than they are saying? What happened in the hidden cave deep in the wood? Does the resident returned murderer know what is going on?
 
This is a brilliant horror mystery and short chapters make this a fast paced thrilling read. The story unfolds through multiple POV’s and secrets are dripped through the story to keep you reading, loved that!

The story is set in the 90’s and it has a very nostalgic feel to it, the music, the posters on the walls, the clothes, all evoking that era. The book includes pictures of newspaper clippings, news reports and pages of the girls zine, I love this device in books and it gives the story a perspective outside of the characters involved and how the world will consume their story.
 
There some really heavy issues raised here, Rae’s ultra conservative religious family and her reaction to this, Donna’s grief and Kat’s over protective mother. But at heart it is a story of the power of female friendship especially in teen girls and how intense and all consuming that can be.

The horror really kicks in at the halfway mark and is visceral and grisly. There is a YA horror that has a similar theme to this but this is far more detailed and complex, a far more rounded story where you feel you really know the girls, their families, their community and the small town they live in.

This is a really fantastic read and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Three girls go into the woods, and only two of them return. Thus begins a small town mystery with horrific twists and turns, and a remarkable cast of characters.

The friendship between the three main characters is definitely one of my favourite parts of this book. Though they came together out of convenience and necessity, the love they share is wonderful and beautiful and it makes all of the tragedies they suffer all the more heart-wrenching.

In terms of horror, the growing sense of dread, of something being not quite right, is magnificent and the descriptions of bodies is breath-taking and frightening.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and think it is perfect for readers of 'My Heart is a Chainsaw' and 'Meddling Kids'.

Kate, Rae and Donna are three friends who are sick of being stuck in their hometown of Little Hope wanting something exciting to happen for once, they go into the woods one day but only two of them return.
For the first half I was bordering on thinking I knew what was going to happen but I was so wrong. It was so far fetched I loved it. It reminded of the point horror books which I loved when I was younger. The extracts and fun facts were a great touch. Overall a great fun read!

Donna, Rae and Kat are 3 teenage girls who all desire to leave Little Hope a small isolated town in the USA, they feel stifled by their lives and so push the boundaries of their lives. They find their lives irreparably changed when they secretly follow a man (who has been jailed for the murder of his parents) to a small cave in the woods. Three enter the cave but only 2 return and the town has plenty of questions that will go unanswered.

Teen friendship and loyalty is at the heart of this book, perfect for those who love Stranger Things. I must admit I felt the ending was slightly off but overall an entertaining read.